With more governments and individuals taking resource scarcity and environmental degradation seriously, the 20th-century model of “take, make, dispose” is no longer seen as tolerable, let alone sustainable. Amidst countless approaches now being taken to reduce manufacturing waste and environmental impacts, the idea of a circular economy has proven to be among of the most influential.

Rather than relying on endless extraction and consumption, circularity encourages businesses and other major institutions to reimagine products, services, and value chains with both longevity and resource efficiency in mind. In a way, this idea harkens back to the days before mass manufacturing, when there were major efforts at all levels to recover and repurpose materials in products that reached their “end of life.” However, with the benefits of modern technology and insights, the potential for cost savings and reductions in environmental impact can be more profound, even as regular people’s access to commodities is increased.

The idea is certainly not new, and many businesses and governments have played around with it over the years. However, the case for embracing circularity has never been stronger. It’s no longer just startups with environmental and social goals who are into the idea, but regular businesses as well. The recent availability of such strong incentives as carbon credits and circular economy financing have caused even traditionally resource-hungry sectors like manufacturing, retail, construction, and even leading-edge electronics to slowly move towards a circular model.

In Singapore, profits and green business methods are being knit closer thanks to an increasing array of publicly-funded incentives. With private financial institutions starting to pitch in, it would be a mistake for local businesses to ignore the potential of circular models. When you’re ready to take your first steps, use this practical guide to keep your move sustainable.

1) Map Your Supply Chains

Before you can redesign your business for circularity, you’ll need a clear understanding of where your materials come from, how they’re used, and what happens to them after. This process, often called “material flow mapping” or “material flow analysis,” helps you identify key inefficiencies as well as opportunities to recover or extend the life of resources.

While chiefly an issue of procurement and operations, as a general rule, it’s a good idea to involve all departments across your organisation in this exercise. The more detailed your resource map, the easier it is to spot low-effort areas where circular principles can be applied most effectively.

2) Design for Repair, Longevity, and Reuse

Building for single-use or rapid planned obsolescence has been de rigueur since at least the early 20th century, when the Phoebus cartel conspired to shorten the lifespan of lightbulbs. However, consumers have become increasingly wary of products that are built to fail, even when they come at lower prices. Given this, there is a real demand for products that are both durable and repairable.

Aside from wasting fewer resources, an approach focused on repairability and durability also supports a variety of circular pathways. Such an approach allows for refurbishment, remanufacturing, or modular upgrades that can give your offerings a longer useful life. It can also open the door to new revenue streams, such as repair services or certified second-hand product sales. “Brand love” can also increase as products are able to serve their owners for far longer.

3) Shift Towards Product-as-a-Service Models

Instead of selling products outright, many retail-focused businesses are now adopting subscription or leasing models. Already, such services as furniture rental, industrial tool leasing, and cloud-based software-as-a-service are gaining popularity among SG businesses.

Because product-as-a-service keeps ownership responsibilities with the business, better maintenance and resource usage are incentivised, effectively increasing the lifespan of products and keeping them away from premature ends in landfills.

4) Recover Value from Waste

Speaking of landfills, a good deal of usable materials ends up in landfills each year. In Singapore, where landfill space is limited and waste management is under increasing scrutiny, structured resource recovery at business sites can massively save on procurement costs, all while improving environmental performance metrics and compliance. The National Environment Agency (NEA) offers insights into waste minimisation and recycling strategies that can make a major difference when deployed at your business.

5) Optimise Reverse Logistics

If you’re taking back used products or materials for refurbishment or recycling, you’ll incur costs for these activities. For that reason, having a reliable and cost-effective reverse logistics system should be part of any such initiatives. In these cases, rethinking your delivery networks to enable efficient collection, return, and reintegration into production loops will be necessary.

While building this infrastructure can seem daunting, it’s increasingly feasible thanks to third-party logistics providers and off-the-shelf digital tracking systems. If properly executed, reverse logistics can turn what would have been end-of-life liabilities into valuable returns.

6) Engage Suppliers and Partners in Circular Goals

No business model exists in a vacuum. As with any serious business initiative, a shift to a circular business model requires some cross-organisational collaboration.

Start by reviewing supplier contracts and sourcing policies. Partners committed to sustainable practices can go a long way in helping you achieve consistent circular outcomes.

7) Tap into Green Finance Opportunities

Circular business models are now eligible for a growing number of green finance instruments. Whether it’s sustainability-linked loans or transition finance, you can find state-owned and private financial institutions that can provide at least some of the capital needed to make a shift financially viable. Singapore’s financial institutions have taken the lead in this space, with a number of banks offering targeted support for all types of businesses.

Circularity Is Worth the Investment

Even in the best of times, a circular business model isn’t going to be a quick fix. It will inevitably require investing in new expertise, skill sets, and technologies, potentially at a much higher cost than simply going with the status quo—at least, for the time being. The long-term payoffs are substantial, with lower running costs, improved brand equity, and consistent alignment with both national and international goals.

If you’re planning to set up shop in Singapore, now’s the time to see what opportunities are in store. With the city-state and local financiers now going all-in on sustainability, businesses that embrace circular practices early stand to benefit, not just from preferential funding and regulation, but a future-ready market position in the region’s most powerful economy.

An effective business process management strategy is important to any business’s success at any growth level. If you’ve been in business for some time, you understand how crucial it is to systematically analyze and optimize workflows every so often. 

Improving your business process management strategies can help eliminate bottlenecks, improve productivity and customer satisfaction, and reduce costs. Below, we’ll look at four practical tips for improving business process management for a more efficient business.

Analyze Existing Strategies

Analyzing existing strategies helps you identify gaps and inefficiencies so you can create a list of practical improvement strategies. You can hire business analysts who understand how to use quantitative and qualitative approaches to gather data on your existing strategies. 

These approaches may include cause-and-effect modeling and measuring each process’s contribution to the business to identify efficiencies. A complete, effective analysis will provide the data you need to take the next step, as you will now know which processes are least efficient.

Set Your Improvement Goals

The best approach to addressing the inefficiencies you identified in your existing processes is to set and pursue SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) goals. You can break down targets and goals for every department and team to achieve within a stipulated period. This will help you achieve more success quickly and increase your chances for overall improvement and growth.

Remember, each player in your team is a crucial asset in realizing your business’s overall goal. Ensure each member is fully equipped through training and resources to pursue the goal targets assigned to them. 

Automate Workflow as Much as Possible

There’s no arguing that automated processes can speed up business operations and improve customer satisfaction. However, you must know what processes to automate and how to do it effectively for optimal return on investment. 

For instance, if you’re in the service industry, you’re more likely to benefit from technologies like cloud computing, augmented and virtual reality, chatbots, and virtual assistants. Leveraging these technologies can help you meet client needs much more efficiently anytime, anywhere they are. 

Similarly, if you sell products through an e-commerce app, you can optimize sales through the OCR SDK technology. The tool integrates with your e-commerce app for easy customer data scanning and secure payment processing. Automating these processes can free up some time, allowing your team to commit to other, possibly more important, tasks. 

Focus on Quality

Meeting every customer’s demand might be impossible, but if most of your customers find your products or services unique and sufficient, you’re on the right track to growth. Satisfied customers are most likely to return, and they often don’t return alone. Other customers will simply refer family and friends to your business based on the high-quality service they received.

Every business process improvement must target customer satisfaction. Developing a new strategy with your customer in mind is the quickest route to achieving optimal returns on investment. Ensure your team understands this and that each team member plays their part, ensuring the customer’s needs are met at each level of the improvement process.

The business processes that worked effectively last year might not be effective enough in a new year. It’s important to review what’s working and improve what’s not so your business can maintain an upward trajectory every financial year.

Running a business is a cyclical process of investing and reinvesting. While you aim to maintain a positive profit margin, you should also think about planning for the long term. You wouldn’t want your business to stay stagnant as the competition in your market intensifies and new trends come along.

Having a growth mindset enables you to stay for the long haul, allowing you to build a business that grows beyond borders and penetrates unfamiliar markets. The key to that is financing. You can’t think about growing your business if you don’t have enough to bankroll the development of new products or the construction of branches in other locations. With this in mind, let’s look at a few things to consider as you prepare to put together a plan for exponential growth:

1. Assess your financial needs

You wouldn’t want to come up with a plan that doesn’t take into account the problems and issues you’re facing. Without insight into your present financial situation, you won’t be able to narrow down your strategy for seeking additional resources to fuel your business’s growth. For this reason, consider how much money your business is making minus the amount of money that goes towards operational expenses.

Growing your business won’t be possible at the moment when you’re paying too much to keep it afloat. It also matters if you can conduct financial forecasting wherein you gather past and present financial statements and analyze current market trends. This enables you to determine whether your business will stay profitable within the next year or so.

2. Review your business model

Aside from checking your business’s financial situation, you will also need to take a step back and look at your current business model. Focus on the ways it’s making money and assess its strengths and weaknesses. It’s possible that your business model worked well in the first few months of launching but when faced with market disruptions, it becomes a hindrance to growth and innovation.

In most cases, a complicated business model discourages investors and costs more to maintain. If that’s the case, then you might want to consider changing the entire setup. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. All it takes is to simplify your business without affecting the value that your products and services bring. This opens you up to new windows for attracting growth capital.

3. Know what growth involves

Increasing your business’s profits is the main objective, but you need to double down on tangible goals. That way, you can allocate resources effectively as you invest in things like a quality workforce or high-end manufacturing equipment.

If your main goal is to recruit the best talents, you may need to offer competitive compensation packages and reach out to services like Triton Canada to help conduct accurate criminal record checks. With such insights, you will have a better understanding of how much financing is needed to accomplish your growth goals.

4. List down possible financing sources

Once you know your business is ripe for expansion, you need to know who and where to reach out for growth capital. The most accessible option is to apply for a business loan. There are lenders offering loans that are meant for expansion activities like building a new facility or purchasing high-end equipment. Shop around for loans that match your financial needs, making sure the terms won’t eat into your profit margins.

Aside from loans, you can also reach out to investors who would offer money to fuel your business’s growth in exchange for a stake in the company. This is the case for venture capital firms that focus on businesses with the potential for long-term success. However, be careful when you’re acquiring growth capital from these investors. There’s a good chance that you would be bought out of the business as it enters its peak.

5. Capitalize on your network

Your business won’t grow past its threshold through capital funding alone. Expansion also relies heavily on how well you can forge partnerships and connections across markets and borders. If part of your growth strategy is to build a presence in another country, then it pays to have growth partners on site who can help you look for local investors who can secure everything you need to get started.

With this in mind, don’t shy away from any opportunity to grow your professional network. Take part in live or online events such as trade shows and conferences where you can introduce your brand and the profitable potential of the products or services it sells. From there, you might as well open up doors leading to grants, investment proposals, and loans with favorable terms.

6. Monitor and assess your business’s trajectory

Once you have put your growth strategy into motion, it’s only a matter of determining whether you’re making the most out of the time and resources you put into your game plan. Tracking your business’s growth is critical to knowing whether your activities yield actual returns or lead you toward massive liabilities.

Consider setting up key performance indicators that allow you to quantify growth. You may want to focus on how well your new branch is attracting new customers. It also helps if you can monitor operational expenses and even social media engagement rates. These indicators will help you analyze your business’s tolerance for growth and make adjustments that will keep your business on the right track.

Endnote

Financing your business’s growth is a process you must undergo if you want to remain a major player in your sector. Consider these tips and give your company the momentum it needs to outgrow the competition!